Page 44 of The Duke's Auctioned Virgin
She turned to Edward. He had paint on his jaw, his shirt, and his hands, and he was looking at her with an expression she had not seen from any man in her life. Not careful. Not hungry. Not amused. But closer to awe. He was looking at her as though he had just watched a dead thing breathe again.
“It looks like you would win all the games anyway, Duke,” she quipped.
“Edward,” he corrected. “How so?”
“I have not laughed in years,” she confessed.
The words hung between them. Paint drying on their hands. The ruined portrait behind them. The fire low in the grate. Her smile was so bright it outshone the light in the room.
Edward could not resist her smile.
Not the paint, or the laughter, or the destroyed portrait, or the way she looked standing in the wreckage of her past with color on her hands and joy on her face.
It was her smile. The one that reached her eyes and changed her whole face, making her look like the girl she had been before Gordon. The girl who had been locked away for three years and was now standing in the ruins of her cage, smiling.
He crossed the room in two strides and kissed her.
She kissed him back with equal passion.
Her paint-stained hands found his shirt and pulled him closer. The paint smeared across the linen, but neither of them cared. His mouth opened against hers, and she tasted heat, tea, and the sound he made low in his throat when she pressed herself against him.
His hands rose to cup her face, thumbs brushing along her jaw. He kissed her like he had been thinking about it for days, which he had, and she kissed him back because she had been thinking about it too, and she was done pretending she had not.
His hands slid from her face down to her waist, and he pulled her against him. She felt the length of his body, solid and warm, and heat curled low in her belly. His mouth moved to her jaw. Her neck. The hollow below her ear. He found the place where her pulse fluttered and pressed his lips to it. She gasped, her fingers tightening in his hair.
He laid her on the carpet gently. One arm behind her back, the other braced against the rug. She went willingly. Not because he told her to, but because she wanted to. Because for the first time in her life, she waschoosingto lie with a man.
She lay on the carpet, and he moved above her. The firelight caught the paint on his hands and the scar on his collarbone where his shirt had come loose. The look in his eyes was careful and yet hungry. He held himself above her with one arm and looked down at her, his eyes asking the question his mouth did not.
“Do not ask me if I am sure,” she breathed. “Or I will paint your face.”
The corner of his mouth lifted.
He kissed her throat. Her collarbone. He loosened the laces at the back of her dress with steady, patient hands.
Each lace was undone with care. The bodice loosened. She felt the air on her collarbones, her shoulders. Then he pulled the fabric down and pressed his mouth to the skin above her shift. She arched into him. The sound she made said everything.
She pulled at the shift. He helped her. Over her head, tossed behind them somewhere. She was bare from the waist up.
The fire was warm on her skin. He was looking at her, yet she was not afraid. She had thought she would be. She had thoughtthat the moment a man saw her bare body, she would feel the old terror, the old helplessness, the locked-room panic that Gordon had woven into her very being.
However, she did not feel any of that. She felt seen. Truly seen. Not as a possession, or an asset, or a problem to be managed, but as a woman who was beautiful and whole and choosing to be here.
“Ye are shaking,” he noted.
“I am not afraid.”
“I know.” He kissed her mouth softly. “I can tell the difference.”
He kissed her throat. Her collarbone. The swell of her breast. His mouth was hot and unhurried. He kissed the soft underside of her breast, and she gasped, her back arching off the carpet.
His tongue traced a slow circle around her nipple, winding inward, and then his mouth closed over it. She made a sound that was half sob, half prayer, and her hand found the back of his head and held him there. His other hand came up to her other breast, thumb brushing across the peak, gentle and then less gentle.
The twin sensations met low in her core and pulled tight like a rope.
“Edward,” she gasped.
“I’ve got ye,” he murmured against her skin, and the vibration went through her chest and down her spine to settle between her hips.
